


Angels with Dirty Faces

by osprey_archer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Banter, Gen, Guilt, Loneliness, Pining, Pre-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 09:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16951434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: “Boys,” Mrs. Barnes interrupted. She put a plate of meatloaf sandwiches on the table. “Boys. You’re both bad boys. I’m sure either of you could’ve been a gangster if you wanted. You want some hot cocoa to go with the sandwiches?”Steve hasn't been around to see the Barnes family as much since he started art school. Bucky intends to change that.





	Angels with Dirty Faces

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Ангелы с грязными лицами](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20415901) by [persikovaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/persikovaya/pseuds/persikovaya)



Bucky met Steve a couple blocks from Auburndale Art School. He didn’t say hi, just fell in step beside him, and after they’d walked half a block, Bucky said, “You wanna go to the new James Cagney picture with me? _Angels with Dirty Faces_ , a gangster flick. It looks like good stuff.” 

Steve shook his head. The cold wind stung his face. “I don’t have any money.” 

“Liar,” Bucky said. “Forgot to wash behind your ears last night, didn’t you?” He took a hand from his pocket and reached behind Steve’s ear, producing a shiny quarter and holding it up in front of Steve’s face.

Steve drew back as if it smelled bad and smacked Bucky’s hand out of the air. Bucky almost dropped the quarter. “Hey now!”

“Does that actually work on anyone?” Steve demanded. 

“My kid sister loves it,” Bucky protested.

“Dolly? The six-year-old?” 

“She turned seven a couple weeks ago. I saved you a slice of birthday cake, but they keep you so busy at school, I had to eat it so it wouldn’t go stale.”

Steve weakened. He hadn’t seen Bucky in a while, it was true: Steve spent long hours at Auburndale, and Bucky’s new job was in the opposite direction. 

But Steve wasn’t about to accept a charity movie ticket, either. “Can’t you ask that dame at your office you like?”

“Louise? She won’t go to the pictures with me anymore. She doesn’t like it that I actually watch the movies.”

Steve snorted. He ducked his mouth down into his coat to hide his smile. “Shame on you. Watching the picture when there’s a willing dame sitting right beside you.” 

“She shoulda waited till we got to the soda fountain after,” Bucky said, and shook his head, full of regret for everything she’d missed. “She missed out. I would’ve given her a goodnight kiss she wouldn’t forget.” 

Steve didn’t want to hear about it. “How about Roberta from down at drugstore, then?” he suggested. 

“Going steady with Tommy now. And she doesn’t like gangster flicks,” Bucky said. He poked Steve in the shoulder. “C’mon, Steve, the dough’s half yours anyway. I got it posing at your school.” 

Steve’s guts clenched. “Archie told me,” he said tersely. 

(“Your buddy the Jew posed for us,” Archie had said, leaning over Steve’s easel. “He’s a lot more bearable when he’s gotta keep his mouth shut.” 

Steve nearly knocked his easel over taking a swing at him.

Later, he couldn’t resist going to the studio to look at the charcoal sketches. Archie’s was elegant, classical, almost clinical in its precision. Thomas Dudley Harriman had done a strange cubist thing that nonetheless bore a disturbing resemblance to Bucky.

There was one that captured perfectly the cleft in Bucky’s chin. Steve nearly stole it.)

“Archie’s a prick,” Bucky said. “I told him if Manet and Renoir and Degas were around in the twentieth century, they’d be shooting movies. He didn’t like it one bit.” 

“You should’ve stopped by to say hi,” Steve said. 

Bucky rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well,” he said, and shrugged. The cold wind blew a newspaper down the street. “I never would’ve gotten the gig without you. Wouldn’t have even known about it. So the money’s half yours.”

Steve shoved his hands in his pockets. His fingers were cold – he didn’t have any gloves – and his pockets didn’t make them much warmer. “It doesn’t work like that.” 

“And we can go back to my place and have sandwiches after. We’ve got leftover meatloaf in the icebox,” Bucky said. “C’mon, Steve, you’ve gotta have a little fun sometimes.” 

If he ate dinner at Bucky’s house, that was one more meal his own mother wouldn’t have to pay for. Art school bills were too much of a stretch for her already. 

He ought to quit, get a job, make things easier on her. But when he suggested it, she wouldn’t hear of it. And he was too selfish to quit on his own. 

“All right,” Steve said. 

“All right!” Bucky tossed a casual arm around Steve’s shoulder and squeezed, and Steve ducked his head and smiled. “If we walk fast, we’ll still be in time for the cartoons.”

***

“So what was the movie about?” Mrs. Barnes asked, slicing leftover meatloaf. Steve and Bucky sat in the Barnes’ kitchen, warming up from the cold walk back from the theater. The younger Barnes sisters had gone to bed, but Rebecca still sat at the far end of the kitchen table, working her last few geometry problems.

“Childhood friends,” Bucky said. “One of ‘em gets arrested and sent to reform school and ends up a gangster, and the other runs fast enough to escape the police and he ends up a priest. The priest tries to reform his friend, only it’s too late and the gangster gets the electric chair in the end.” He leaned over the back of Steve’s chair, framing Steve’s face with his hands. “Look at this face,” he said. “Can you imagine anyone sending him to the electric chair?” 

“With that angel face?” Mrs. Barnes said.

“Exactly,” Bucky said. “ _Angels with Dirty Faces_. It’s right there in the title.” 

Steve jerked his head out from between Bucky’s hands. “We both know you’d be the gangster and I’d be the priest,” Steve informed Bucky. “You're not even Catholic. I was an altar boy.” 

“For like two weeks. What’d you do to get kicked out, steal the sacramental wine?”

Steve had gotten too sick to continue. “Kicked one of the other altar boys.”

“’Course you did. Bet he was bigger than you.”

“Twice my size. We broke a pew.” 

“You see what I’m saying, Ma? Forget about reform school. It’s a miracle he’s not at the bottom of the East River.”

“Like you’ve got any room to talk,” Steve said. “You remember when you discovered that back way into the vaudeville, and you charged kids nearly as much as a proper ticket to use it?”

“I had a real racket going,” Bucky said, pleased as punch at the memory. 

“Spoken like a true gangster. I would’ve cried when they put you in the electric chair, Buck.” 

“Nah. You’re not that forgiving. Probably you’d’ve figured I had it coming by the end,” Bucky said. 

Rebecca, still bent over her geometry, snorted. “Now wait – ” Steve began. 

“Boys,” Mrs. Barnes interrupted. She put a plate of meatloaf sandwiches on the table. “Boys. You’re both bad boys. I’m sure either of you could’ve been a gangster if you wanted. You want some hot cocoa to go with the sandwiches?”

Rebecca spoke without lifting her head. “I’d like some cocoa.” 

“Finish that proof and you can have some too,” Mrs. Barnes said. She smiled at her oldest daughter’s bent head. “This girl’s gonna be a teacher,” she told Steve, as she had told him half a dozen times before.

“Yes, Mama,” Rebecca said, her voice long-suffering. But Steve could see a smile curling up the corner of her lip. 

“She’ll be going to college next year,” Bucky said, and leaned over to ruffle Rebecca’s hair. She swatted his hand. 

“You should think about college, too,” Mrs. Barnes told him. “You’re still a young man.” 

“No, Ma, I’m fine where I am,” Bucky said, leaning back in his chair to grin up at her. Mrs. Barnes lifted her hands and went to the stove. 

“You don’t even like being a clerk,” Rebecca said, her eyes still on her geometry homework. 

Bucky’s smile grew forced. “Sure I do, Becky.” 

Last year, Rebecca had thrown a book at Bucky for forgetting to call her Rebecca. Now she just shook her head and flipped a page in her geometry book. Steve took a meatloaf sandwich.

“Hey, let me help you with that,” Bucky called to his mother. He swung himself out of his chair and reached easily above his mother’s head to get the cocoa canister out of the high cupboard.

“Aw, my son the lifesaver. What would I do without you?” Mrs. Barnes asked wryly.

“Get a stepstool.”

Rebecca was smiling again, for all her pretense that she was focusing on her geometry. Mrs. Barnes was just measuring the cocoa into the saucepan when Mr. Barnes came in, throwing open the apartment door and booming, “I’m home!” 

He shook rain off his coat like a collie. Little Dolly Barnes scurried out of her bedroom, dressed in her nightgown. “She was asleep,” Mrs. Barnes told Mr. Barnes, smiling.

“The train was late,” Mr. Barnes excused himself, ruffling his youngest daughter’s hair as she wrapped her arms around his waist. She clung to him so tightly that he had trouble walking to the kitchen table. “You can sleep later, can’t you, pumpkin?” Dolly giggled and nodded. “Hiya, Steve. Long time no see. Jimmy!” He pulled an evening paper from his coat pocket and waved it at Bucky. “You see the news about Monty Stratton? They had to amputate his leg.” 

Bucky leaned across the table to snag the paper. “That’s a crying shame for the White Sox.”

“He was a damn good pitcher. You trying to pickpocket me, Dolly?” Mr. Barnes asked, and swung Dolly up onto his lap. She giggled and nodded. He took a handful of candy from another pocket and sprinkled it across onto the tablecloth. Rebecca shifted her geometry book out of the way. “How’s my clever girl?”

“Studying,” Rebecca said tersely.

“You want some cocoa, Jim?” Mrs. Barnes asked her husband. She set a cup of cocoa in front of him as she spoke. 

“Don’t mind if I do.” He took a flask from his coat pocket and poured a little brandy into the cup. Dolly struggled to unwrap a candy, and he plucked it from her hands and untwisted the crinkly cellophane for her. The candy looked very small in his big hands. 

Steve felt suddenly, powerfully out of place – like he was standing at a warmly lit window looking in at a family gathered around their supper table. His nose pressed against the glass; the family talking and laughing, too happy to notice the would-be intruder. 

He ought to be in his own cold house, with his own mother, with her cough that wouldn’t quit. 

Mrs. Barnes put a cup of cocoa in front of Rebecca, too, notwithstanding that she hadn’t finished her geometry yet. She rested a hand on her daughter’s head for a moment, then moved on. “Steve? You want some cocoa too?”

“No, ma’am, I’d better be getting home,” Steve said. He was already slipping out of his seat, so quietly that it didn’t distract Bucky from the sports pages. 

“Take some sandwiches,” Mrs. Barnes urged.

Steve wanted to refuse, but that would make it harder to get away. He shoved his feet in his shoes and pulled on his coat and waited, trying not to look impatient, as Mrs. Barnes wrapped up two sandwiches in wax paper. “Here,” she said “Don’t be a stranger.” 

“Thank you,” Steve murmured, and bent his head as if buttoning his coat required great concentration. 

It was nice of her. He’d have lunch tomorrow, for once. 

“I’d like some cocoa!” Dolly piped. 

“It’ll keep you up all night, bubbalah,” Mrs. Barnes said. 

Steve had only finished half his buttons. He glanced back at Bucky, leaning back in his chair as he laughed, strong and bright in the center of his family. Then Steve slipped out into the night. 

He was only halfway down the block, still buttoning his coat, when he heard Bucky calling, “Steve!” 

Steve turned around. Bucky dashed toward him through the rain. “You forgot your gloves,” Bucky said, waving a pair of gloves about his head.

Steve stared at the gloves dangling from Bucky’s hand. He didn’t have any gloves, and he knew it and Bucky knew it and Bucky thought that Steve was going to let Bucky pull of the same kind of bullshit he’d tried with the quarter earlier. 

“They’re not mine,” Steve said. 

“You sure?” Bucky asked. “Some days I think you’d forget your own head if it wasn’t attached at the neck.” He held out the gloves. Steve shoved his hands deeper in his pockets, and Bucky said, “C’mon, Steve, you’re an artist. You’ve gotta protect your hands.”

“I can’t keep taking things from you!” Steve said. 

Bucky rocked back. “What do you mean?” he said. 

“Movie tickets, sandwiches,” Steve said. He thrust the packet of sandwiches at Bucky, but Bucky scooted back, hands raised as if Steve were pointing a gun at him. “Your time, your family’s time – ”

“You’re not _taking_ our time,” Bucky said. “If anything, we’re taking yours. You never want to come around anymore. We’re not good enough now that you’ve got fancy art school friends?” 

“No!” Steve shouted; and it was only after he said it that he saw Bucky hadn’t really meant it in the first place. He was smirking.

“So how come we barely see you any more?” Bucky pressed. 

“Because…” Steve hesitated, trying to find the right words – trying for some explanation that did not include the words, _I think about those naked sketches of you all the time_. “I can’t keep relying on you forever. I’m old enough that I ought to be able to stand on my own two feet.” 

“No one stands on their own two feet, you know that, Steve?” Bucky said. “That’s just capitalist propaganda, that’s what that is.”

“I know,” Steve admitted. He felt the weakness of the explanation even as he added, “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“When you’re a _burden_ , Steve, I’ll let you know.” Bucky thrust the gloves out. “Now take the gloves. I want to be able to say _I knew him before he was a famous artist_ , and I’ll never be able to do that if you get frostbite and all your fingers fall off, now will I?”

“No,” Steve admitted. 

But he didn’t take the gloves. Bucky had to grab him by the wrist and pull the glove on over Steve’s bare hands. The light touches of his fingers felt like they burned holes in Steve’s skin. 

Steve’s face was on fire by the time Bucky had both gloves on him. Even in the dark street, it must be visible; and surely Bucky could see the embarrassed hunch of Steve’s shoulders. 

But he didn’t understand it, of course: he thought Steve was just embarrassed to take the gloves. He thumped Steve on the shoulder and said, “Remember us all when you’re famous. The shoe’ll be on the other foot then. I’ll show up at your doorstep and beg you to pay me to pose for you.” 

Steve’s mouth went dry. He cleared his throat. “Sure,” he said, and his words were heavy with an irony that he knew Bucky wouldn’t hear. “I’d let you pose for me any day.”

Bucky just laughed. “And till then, don’t make me dig any more quarters out of your ears. You know how much earwax you got built up in there?” 

“Not enough,” Steve said, deadpan. “It’s not blocking out the sound of your voice.” 

Bucky crowed and gave Steve a noogie. Steve shook him off, grinning, sheepish and yet triumphant. “Don’t be a stranger,” Bucky said.

“I won’t,” Steve promised. “Now you get on home before your cocoa gets cold.” 

Bucky slung his arm around Steve’s shoulders, and squeezed, and ruffled his hair; and then he left. Steve watched him go, followed him in imagination up the dim squalid stairs, and into the light and warmth and life of the Barnes’ apartment. 

Then Steve adjusted the packet of sandwiches and turned away toward home. His face stung with the cold. But inside the gloves, his hands felt warm.


End file.
